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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Today I am joining in with Kerry over at Ramblings of a Biscornu Addict for her "March Madness"! ..... because it tickled me when I read about the idea, and I just had to have a go!!!

By the way, if you don't know what a Biscornu is, you will see one or two in Kerry's blog header as soon as you visit. You will also be able to read more about Kerry's themes for each month! Look in her header bar for the category "Theme-tas-stitch 2017" ! I think it's a really great idea to have a different target each month .... well done Kerry for sharing!

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The idea for March was to work on as many projects as possible.

My first project for March was something totally new to me!

This was a workshop, entitled "Printing for Quilting", held by my local Handicraft Group, (and I will blog about it in a separate post) so, for now, I'll just say: it was block printing onto fabric ..... tell you more in a few days.

The fabrics you can see here were my attempts!

The yellow and green fabrics were scraps I had tie dyed a couple of years ago at a Summer Workshop, which I thought might look better with some printing. Not terribly good photos .... you can't really see my printing very well!

This one is mine too - destined to become a book cover ....
one day!

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Then I joined in with a wonderful blog hop: Quilter's Laundry Day blog hop ..... it was such fun! You can read all about it in this post!

I met lots of bloggers I didn't know, and rediscovered a few I'd found earlier, and had lost track of! Shows how important it is to "follow" those blogs you enjoy!

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After all the patchwork, and basting I wasn't sure how to actually quilt my block, hence I cut out, and basted an 11" practise block (basically a sandwich of 2 calico squares with polyester wadding in between them).

But I panicked when I found I couldn't FMQ (Free Motion Quilt), despite covering the feed dogs and using an embroidery foot!

It was pretty disastrous!

Such a waste of cotton!

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On my train journeys I was able to stitch a little more of my tulips in vase project, (mostly the stems)

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and, on last Friday's journey I started this project .....

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Stitching in the evening, I added a few leaves around the little blue flowers on this one!

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And yesterday I was working on "Cocoa Sampler"

It took ages just adding the heart
surrounded by purple stitches (not blue)!

Oh dear, only seven projects, I thought I would do more, I had another cross stitch kit poised ready to stitch, but "reporting in" date was yesterday, so all stitching is on hold for now!

I haven't been able to work on the number of projects Kerry has! Tee hee! But, it was fun seeing how many I could stitch in March ..... and the month isn't over yet!

Now I'm off to do some visiting, and see what everyone else is stitching! Why don't you come and have a look too, at

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Hello Dear Readers,Today I'm joining Jen of A Dream and A Stitch, and Jan Holton of Colour Creating & Quilting for their Quilters Laundry Day Blog Hop. Thank you Jen and Jan for organising the hop, it has been great fun stitching this block.

Unfortunately I have run completely out of time, and I only have a flimsy to show although it is ready for quilting. I am not really confident enough to quilt quickly as I haven't done much quilting. I am using a polyester wadding ..... I like a puffy finish to my quilting, but I find it a bit tricky to quilt with this thickness.I really enjoyed stitching this gorgeous free pattern, designed by Jen Rosin. However my sewing machine completely slowed me down ..... the needle shaft isn't quite straight, meaning I have to be very careful stitching my seams, to stitch them the correct width. So, I was really pleased with the way my little block has turned out, and even with the way the back looked!!! It all measured up perfectly!

I thought a "Friendship Star" block would be really appropriate for the blog hop!

But, whoops! .... I stitched a 4 1/2" pattern which worked out at 5", then I couldn't find a 4" pattern .... so I drew the block to scale, and used the measurements from the larger block, taking 1/8" and a titchy bit off each measurement! It worked! Yay!

I was really pleased how well all the critical little pieces went together:

Hugs,

Barbara

Monday, March 06, 2017

First, I'm linking to Daffycat for TUSALs. Click HERE to find out more, and, secondly I've been meaning to post about a blog hop I'm joining in with, I'm afraid there isn't much time, however, I know some of you are quicker workers than I, and you might like to join in, so read on for info!

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It's been a while since I first posted about TUSALs and although I've done a lot of stitching since then I am very frugal stingey, and use right to the last inch of any thread, so there hasn't been much to show!

For Jo's Secret Stitching Sweethearts blog hop last month I made a completely new project - the sachet you can see below with my TUSAL jar, and seemed to have a lot more trimmings from this than any other project I've stitched.

I've also been working on my "travel" project (which I am stitching "free style" as I don't have the pattern - the kit was a gift from my sister who didn't want it, however she had lost the pattern somewhere) whenever possible (see 4th picture below - the vase ..... waiting for its tulips!), so a lot of my ends come from that.

As well as "looking after" my thread ends, my TUSAL jar is also caring for some pretty ribbon from the next project I am just about to start.

When I visited Kerry of "Ramblings of a Biscornu Addict" recently, she was showing a picture of a needle book she had stitched for a friend by Textile Heritage, which reminded me I had a similar kit in my "Dreaded Cupboard" awaiting stitching - called Butterflies & Buddleia.

But before I could make a start on this new sachet I had to wash the fabric to try to remove the creases you might just be able to see - probably caused by the number of years it had been lingering in the cupboard waiting to be stitched! They are not completely gone, but hopefully won't be too visible once stitched.

Travel stitching

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While I was visiting Kate of Smiles from Kate I read of a blog hop being organised by Jen and Jan - with a competition to stitch a really darling block ..... I thought I'd join in! Read about it HERE on Jan's blog , Colour, Creating and Quilting. You can download the free pattern from Craftsy via Jan's blog.

These are the fabrics I thought I might use:

Why don't you pop over to see what is happening! I think you might just have time to join in, and there are prizes .....

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These are a couple of projects I'm working on at the moment, but of course there is always something else going on at the same time! One of them was the fun "printing for quilting" workshop I went to this weekend, and shortly I will share some photos with you!

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Thank you to everyone who commented on my Latest Mini Tote .... there were some great questions, and I will answer them shortly ..... some of my answers were too complicated to put in comments.

Blogging Slowly

I'm joining in with:

About Me

Hi, I'm Barbara. Welcome to my blog. I live on the edge of the North Downs in Surrey, England, with d.h. and our cute, bossy, chatty lady cat.
This is mostly a stitching blog, but there will be the occasional posts about walks - both country and town.
I hope you will find something you enjoy reading here, and that you will come back and visit me again!